


Silence is Golden

by JamtheDingus



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: A little gore, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Blood, Dialogue Light, Gen, Heavy Angst, Hunk (Voltron) Angst, Hunk (Voltron) Whump, Hunk (Voltron)-centric, Self-Mutilation, Torture, Truth Serum, Violence, Whump, metaphors out the wazoo, oof, truth pollen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-09
Updated: 2018-05-09
Packaged: 2019-05-04 12:14:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14592810
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JamtheDingus/pseuds/JamtheDingus
Summary: Hunk is dragged from his broken Lion kicking and screaming. His shin is busted— he can tell from searing pain that shoots up it whenever he tries to get a foot under himself to pull away— and his vision is spotty. He can’t tell if it’s blood clinging to his eyelashes or tears, but either way he tastes metal on the back of his tongue, as if someone had melted pennies back there and forced him to swallow them down. His throat burns as if it were true.They steal him from his team and force him into their ship, and the last thing Hunk sees is the Lions descending on a barely-there Yellow. The last thing he hears before they tire of his squirming and knock him out is the wailing cry of Yellow’s roar echoing between his ears.---Hunk gets taken.





	Silence is Golden

**Author's Note:**

> Make sure you pay attention to the tags!!!!
> 
> I wasn't sure if I should tag this with non-con drug-use since I used the Truth Serum tag but uh, yeah. Hunk gets injected like A Lot.
> 
> also the other paladins are barely in this so if you're here for their reactions... gomen....
> 
> this is all just some grade a hunk pain
> 
> ALSO if you have a problem with _**implied character death**_ , please turn back now! it doesn't actually happen, which is why i didn't tag for it, but i know that it could be very triggering!

Hunk is dragged from his broken Lion kicking and screaming. His shin is busted— he can tell from searing pain that shoots up it whenever he tries to get a foot under himself to pull away— and his vision is spotty. He can’t tell if it’s blood clinging to his eyelashes or tears, but either way he tastes metal on the back of his tongue, as if someone had melted pennies back there and forced him to swallow them down. His throat burns as if it were true.

They steal him from his team and force him into their ship, and the last thing Hunk sees is the Lions descending on a barely-there Yellow. The last thing he hears before they tire of his squirming and knock him out is the wailing cry of Yellow’s roar echoing between his ears.

 

⇹

 

He wakes up strapped into a chair. A needle waves at him from across the room, and sharp teeth sneer at him when he tries to jerk away from it.

They say something to him— the teeth, and the angry fingers that grip him from his left, and even the person in the corner with glowing eyes that pierce through the dark— but he can’t understand them past the busted translator of his suit and the boiling of his blood as it rushes through his veins.

They inject him with something blue that feels pleasantly cool as it spreads up his bicep, only to sear him from the inside out as it reaches his heart. Millions of red-hot pokers pierce him and he can’t get them out, and Hunk is sure he’s crying by now.

More hands grip him, and a strap comes around his forehead to keep him still. They rip away his headband, tossing it behind them like garbage, and the only thing he can do is helplessly watch as they trample over it while they circle him like vultures in a desert that have spotted a dying meerkat.

Another needle— this time to his jugular. It doesn’t hurt as badly, but it leaves him reeling as his stomach immediately tries to climb past his ribs and out of his mouth. The room spins, fast and unforgiving like a rollercoaster, and he desperately squeezes his eyes shut past the tears to make it stop.

Sharp nails scratch along his shoulders, not exactly angry but not in the slightest way kind, and he’s tilted back in his chair to face the ceiling.

He’s legitimately surprised to see lights up there, fluorescent as they may be. The room had been so dark that he’d started to think they’d blinded him.

He says as much to his captors, too, which surprises him even more.

Another grin stares down at him, and he swears the corners are red-stained with blood and gore.

They ask him questions in a language he can’t understand no matter how hard he strains to repeat the syllables, but he’s able to answer anyway. He hears himself tell them about the Castle— its defenses. About the paladins— their weaknesses.

About their allies. About the Blade of Marmora.

He can’t stop himself from vomiting up everything he can— both words and food. He tries, but he can’t.

 

⇹

 

Hunk figures out later, when they tire of him and can no longer squeeze coherent words past his swollen lips and congested nose and decide to toss him in a tiny cell, that he was drugged.

He throws up in the corner and immediately laughs about it as he thinks of his friends— how they react to him puking. They’d gotten used to his finicky tummy over the years, but they never stopped making the funniest faces whenever he couldn’t hold it in.

Hunk has nothing to clean it up with, so he leaves it in the corner and curls up near the door. There’s no bed— no furniture or even any openings that he can see. As soon as the door had slid shut, the room formed a seamless cube that he had no escape from.

It doesn’t make him panic as much as it should have. He feels eerily calm, and he wonders if its from one of the things he was injected with. But, of the same regard, his heart beats harder than it should, and his hands shake when he holds them to his eyes in the darkness.

He can’t sleep for however long it takes for them to fetch him again. When they pull him out, his lips are dry and cracked like he hadn’t had water for days, but his shin doesn’t hurt anymore.

 

⇹

 

Hunk is appalled when he finds himself getting used to the treatment. They pull him from the cell and he goes calmly, unlike the first time. He doesn’t hear Yellow crying for him, so they tell him there’s no need to put on a show.

He doesn’t believe them, but he also doesn’t cry for her, either.

When they set him in the chair, he dips his head back so they can easily hold him down. They tried letting him sit shackle-free, but no matter how hard they try to train him to sit still, his body instinctively reacts to the pain every time.

They never beat him. Never leave bruises or cut his skin. Even the pricks of the needles get cleaned with a quick pass of some type of ointment, and the tiny holes stitch themselves over before he blinks.

Sometimes Hunk thinks it’s all part of his imagination, if he’s being honest. He says as much to them.

They— who are they, even?— just move on and ask him more about Voltron.

And he tells them.

 

⇹

 

They stop giving him the blue stuff. His veins stop aching after sessions, and his heart doesn’t burn whenever he breathes too hard, either.

They tell him he doesn’t need it anymore, because he’s being very good for them. Soon, he won’t need any needles.

He doesn’t know what to say about that, so he doesn’t.

 

⇹

 

A new set of teeth greet him at his cell between sessions. He doesn’t react, just stands straight and waits to be taken somewhere new, but the Galra doesn’t grin at him. Instead, a hand places itself against the crown of his head, and something sharp is pressed into his hand.

They ask him questions that go over his head. He’s asked about how long he’s been there, if he knows what they’re doing to him.

It hurts not to answer the questions, and the new Galra only shakes their head and ushers him back to sitting down in his corner. If they notice the growing pile of puke opposite of him, they do nothing about it.

The glint of a familiar insignia startles him, and he grabs for it before he can stop himself. The Galra lets him grab for their knife, and he passes over the pattern as his eyes well up. The Blade shines back at him.

“I want to go home.” He says.

“Voltron is coming for you.” They reply.

 

⇹

 

The sharp thing, a plain knife, is left with him with instructions to use it when he has to.

Hunk doesn’t tell about his encounter. They don’t ask, so he doesn’t say. He starts doing that a lot, and they don’t notice.

 

⇹

 

They ask him about his home, and he tells them everything he misses about it. They don’t care about that part, but he keeps talking.

They ask if it’s a weakness of Voltron, and he refuses to reply. The lights seem brighter when they lean him back this time, but he refuses to tell them that, too.

He’s yelled at— and Hunk realizes immediately that he understands them, even without the translators. He wonders if it’s just from exposure, or maybe they shot him up with some sort of language-drug, too— but he still holds his tongue.

He’s scratched along the face with sharp claws, and blood paints from the wound to his collarbone.

He still holds his tongue.

 

⇹

 

It’s after that instance that they get more aggressive— antsy. They know Voltron is coming as much as Hunk does, and they’re desperate to find every ounce of information they can squeeze from him.

The injections jump from none to double what they first gave him. He screams so loudly that his ears pop as liquid fire curls around his muscles, locking them up until he’s as stiff as a corpse.

He imagines that dying would feel better. He doesn’t say as much to them.

When they finish assaulting him with questions and injections, they drag him by his feet back to his room. He’s too stiff to get up and walk himself.

“Voltron isn’t coming for you.” They say. They want him to stop resisting.

“Yes, they are.” He says back.

 

⇹

 

Voltron comes sooner than they all expect.

The ship rocks with a barrage of angry lasers, and the sound of a Lion’s roar shocks him like cold water washing over broiled skin.

Hunk isn’t sure if it’s one of the other lions or Yellow, but he’s just as emotional to hear the familiar, _safe_ sound that he doesn’t care about the sobs that wrack through him.

But he also hears an alarm blare through the ship, and the telltale sound of harried footsteps edging closer to his cell.

He knows without a doubt that they’re coming for him— to use him against his friends and tell them all the maneuvers they have— but Hunk won’t tell them.

“Yes, you will.” He murmurs to himself, and he knows it’s the truth.

But the knife is still in his cell, hidden beneath the pile of vomit that never gets cleaned. It’s disgusting, Hunk knows, but it’s the only place that it wouldn’t have gotten found, and the Galra from before— the one with the kind teeth— told him what to do.

He takes off his shirt and pulls the knife out by its pommel, wiping it as clean as he can get it.

The Blade’s ideology is well known by the members of Team Voltron. While only Keith was Galra, and none of them really _agreed_ with the sentiment… knowledge or death is a distinctive part of the war they were in.

They wanted his knowledge, so he has to choose death. Right?

 

⇹

 

Voltron tears the ship to pieces. They’ve already gotten a lock on Hunk— thanks to both Pidge _and_ the Yellow Lion— and they leave his section untouched as they rip the abductors to bits. It’s brutal, flashy, and definitely more a show of vengeance than strength, but it gets the job done.

Shiro and Lance are the ones who go to get their missing teammate. Shiro, because he can get them through the doors, and Lance because he can shoot down their enemies before they even turn to grab for a weapon.

The two stomp down the halls, careful only in the loosest definition of the word. It’s no doubt in their mind that they’ll get their yellow paladin back, but passing by dozens of cells with no sign of him spikes their anxiety anyway.

A door refuses to open under Shiro’s touch, so they bash it down with a gun and a fist. And, down the hall, their sights zero in on a trio of Galra dragging an incredibly familiar figure through another door.

Lance shoots them without hesitation. He’ll find time to feel guilty about it later.

The four bodies drop, each one as still as the last, and the paladins’ hearts plummet with it. They rush forward for Hunk, dragging him out of the blood trail that they realize is coming _from_ him, but Shiro makes Lance step away as the latter starts to panic.

They argue.

Lance yells at Shiro, already tearing up as the worst case scenario washes over him, but Shiro is firm in keeping him back.

But, they both startle when Hunk slides his knees underneath himself and sits up straight.

“Hunk!”

The desperately overjoyed shout echoes through the near-empty hall, and the rest of the team shouts with him in joy at the exclamation.

He’s hoisted up, and blood is wiped from his face. Some spills from his lips, though, and Shiro furrows his brow as he tilts Hunk’s chin up. “Let me see.”

Hunk shakes his head, and the two share a wide-eyed look over his head.

“Hunk,” Lance says, voice shaky as he forces himself to smile. “Let us see? We just wanna help, buddy.”

Hunk only frowns at him, holding up the knife in his left hand. He waves it around wordlessly before he lets it drop with a disgustingly wet clatter, and two pairs of eyes immediately dart to his right. Blood, half-dried, stains between his fingers, and Lance nearly hyperventilates when he pulls the sticky appendages apart.

In his hand, snugly against his palm, Hunk still holds his tongue.

**Author's Note:**

> x: this is the grittiest thing i've ever written. 
> 
> hmu on tumblr [@jamthedingus](http://jamthedingus.tumblr.com/)!


End file.
